simple,
there was an earnest truthfulness and kindliness about him, which won on
the affections amazingly. He would speak to me of Gabrielle by the hour
together, with ever-increasing delight; we both marveled at her
surpassing beauty, which each week became more angelic and pure in
character.

On me alone all my sister's caresses were bestowed; all the pent-up love
of a passionate nature found vent in my arms, which were twined around
her with strange enthusiastic love; therefore it was, her faults
occasioned me such agony--for I could not but see them--and I alone, of
all the world, knew her noble nature--knew what she "might have been." I
told her that I expected to have found her cheerful, now she had a happy
home of her own.

"Happy! cheerful!" she cried, sadly. "A childhood such as mine was,
flings dark shadows over all futurity, Ruth."

"Oh, speak not so, beloved," I replied; "have you not a good husband,
your error mercifully forgiven? are you not surrounded by blessings?"

"And dependent," she answered, bitterly

"But dependent on your husband, as the Bible says every woman should
be."

"And my husband is utterly dependent on his father, Ruth; he has neither
ability nor health to help himself, and on his father he depends for our
bread. I have but exchanged one bondage for another; and all my hope is
now centred in you, dearest, to educate you--to render you independent
of this cold, hard world."

"Why, Gabrielle," I said, "you are not seventeen yet--it is not too
late, is it, for you also to be educated?"

"Too late, too late," answered Gabrielle, mournfully. "Listen, wise
Ruth, I shall be a mother soon; and to my child, if it is spared, and to
you, I devote myself. You have seen the Misses Erminstoun--you have seen
vulgarity, insolence, and absurd pretension; they have taunted me with
my ignorance, and I will not change it now. The blood of the De Courcys
and O'Briens has made me a lady; and all the wealth of the Indies can
not make them so. No, Ruth, I will remain in ignorance, and yet tower
above them, high as the clouds above the dull earth, in innate
superiority and power of mind!"

"Oh, my sister," I urged timidly, "it is not well to think highly of
one's self--the Bible teaches not so."

"Ruth! Ruth!" she exclaimed, impatiently, "it is not that I think highly
of myself, as you well know; you well know with what anguish I have
deplored our wants; it is pretension I despise, and rise above;